love the plot line. Makes me wish I could just keep myself from reading until there’s a whole chapter’s worth to read at once but I can’t help it! I’m a selkie junkie!
keep up the good work and let us know when you have a book version bound and ready for sale.

It’s a reasonable assumption. Suppose you were running an orphanage in an exclusively white-populated city (let’s just roll with the example, I’m not trying to be racist), and a black female dropped off a black child for care. Your first conclusion would be that they were related, probably closely.
You bring up a good point, though…whoever dropped Selkie off isn’t guaranteed to be her mother.

Though it does suddenly occur to me that some other female of the same species (whether a relative or friend or whatever) might have dropped Selkie off at the orphanage after something had happened to her biological parents.

Ok, I’ve officially been reading this comic way much. I went to bed last night after eating some seafood and had a dream that I was turning into a Selkie. I freaked out a little and then my gills started to dry out and when I tried to flush them out I woke up choking on water from my water bottle. lol, was kinda cool though.

Oh! Poor little girl. 🙁 The look on Selkie’s face. Got me teary eyed. Luckily Todd loves her so much and Grandma and Grandpa too. I love your way of dealing with such difficult emotional themes in your story. Very good! We loves yous Selkie. 🙂

Excellent use of the graded backgrounds! It worked especially well on the stairs. Though it didn’t work quite as well in panels 4 and 6 – especially in 6, with the extreme close-up of Selkie’s face, the background shading just seemed to me to throw the panel off balance a little – not bad, just not quite right. I can’t explain it any better though.

Excellent fan art Elina and ShiyoPanthera. Selkie looks better in red than I would’ve expected with the blue skin. And ShiyoPanthera’s teen Selkie has retained her cuteness – not quite so rebellious looking.

Now, about who dropped her off. A question occurs to me that could relate to the topic; Dave, can Selkie’s species interbreed with humans? If so, then that could help explain the situation?

Just a thought on the language-barrier mystery: Todd says Selkie’s mom didn’t speak English when she was dropped off…but what if Selkie did? I could easily see Selkie as bilingual from a young age and I imagine a 5 year old Selkie crying “Mommy!” would clue the caretakers in pretty quickly to the identity of the adult.

Speaking of Selkie not knowing what to call herself, I get the feeling “nei li” was an answer when Todd asked herself that earlier – but the poor kid’s so unsure of herself she retracted her answer when Todd pushed her on it. This assumption could have unfortunate consequences, similar to how Terry Pratchett explains that many geographical features are named such things as “a mountain, you idiot” when translated into the local language.
Explorer: “You there, native, what’s that over there?”
Native: “It’s a mountain, dummy.” (Translated for convenience)
Explorer: “Ah, a wonderful name! Such a rich culture you savages have.”

To say normally I do not like storys like this would be an under statement, but the mystery part kept me reading. I have to say, for such a wierd idea it’s amused me more then I thought it could have. And props to you for such drawing progression so quickly. 😉